Hollywoods Melodramatic Imagination

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Hollywood's Melodramatic Imagination

Author : Geoff Mayer
Publisher : McFarland
ISBN 13 : 1476674779
Total Pages : 350 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (766 download)

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Book Synopsis Hollywood's Melodramatic Imagination by : Geoff Mayer

Download or read book Hollywood's Melodramatic Imagination written by Geoff Mayer and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2021-12-09 with total page 350 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Melodrama is the foundation of American cinema. It is, however, a poorly understood term. While it is a pervasive and persuasive dramatic mode, it is not tied to any specific moral or ideological system. It is not a singular genre; rather, it operates as a "genre generating machine" capable of determining the aesthetics and structure of the drama within many genres. Melodrama centers the conflict around the clash between good and evil and provides a sense of poetic justice--but the specific values embedded in notions of good and evil are determined by the culture, and they shift from nation to nation, region to region, and period to period. This book explores the "populist" westerns of the 1930s, the propaganda films that followed the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, and the popularity of Sax Rohmer's master villain Fu Manchu. "Melodramas of passion" and film noir also offer a challenge to melodrama with its seemingly alienated protagonists and downbeat endings. Yet, with few exceptions, Hollywood was able to assimilate these genres within its melodramatic imagination.

Hollywood's Melodramatic Imagination

Author : Geoff Mayer
Publisher : McFarland
ISBN 13 : 1476643075
Total Pages : 350 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (766 download)

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Book Synopsis Hollywood's Melodramatic Imagination by : Geoff Mayer

Download or read book Hollywood's Melodramatic Imagination written by Geoff Mayer and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2021-12-22 with total page 350 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Melodrama is the foundation of American cinema. It is, however, a poorly understood term. While it is a pervasive and persuasive dramatic mode, it is not tied to any specific moral or ideological system. It is not a singular genre; rather, it operates as a "genre generating machine" capable of determining the aesthetics and structure of the drama within many genres. Melodrama centers the conflict around the clash between good and evil and provides a sense of poetic justice--but the specific values embedded in notions of good and evil are determined by the culture, and they shift from nation to nation, region to region, and period to period. This book explores the "populist" westerns of the 1930s, the propaganda films that followed the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, and the popularity of Sax Rohmer's master villain Fu Manchu. "Melodramas of passion" and film noir also offer a challenge to melodrama with its seemingly alienated protagonists and downbeat endings. Yet, with few exceptions, Hollywood was able to assimilate these genres within its melodramatic imagination.

Imitations of Life

Author : Marcia Landy
Publisher : Wayne State University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780814320655
Total Pages : 624 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (26 download)

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Book Synopsis Imitations of Life by : Marcia Landy

Download or read book Imitations of Life written by Marcia Landy and published by Wayne State University Press. This book was released on 1991 with total page 624 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On melodrama.

Melodrama Unbound

Author : Christine Gledhill
Publisher : Columbia University Press
ISBN 13 : 0231543190
Total Pages : 761 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (315 download)

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Book Synopsis Melodrama Unbound by : Christine Gledhill

Download or read book Melodrama Unbound written by Christine Gledhill and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2018-05-08 with total page 761 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For too long melodrama has been associated with outdated and morally simplistic stereotypes of the Victorian stage; for too long film studies has construed it as a singular domestic genre of familial and emotional crises, either subversively excessive or narrowly focused on the dilemmas of women. Drawing on new scholarship in transnational theatrical, film, and cultural histories, this collection demonstrates that melodrama is a transgeneric mode that has long spoken to fundamental aspects of modern life and feeling. Pointing to melodrama’s roots in the ancient Greek combination of melos and drama, and to medieval Christian iconography focused on the pathos of Christ as suffering human body, the volume highlights the importance to modernity of melodrama as a mode of emotional dramaturgy, the social and aesthetic conditions for which emerged long before the French Revolution. Contributors articulate new ways of thinking about melodrama that underscore its pervasiveness across national cultures and in a variety of genres. They examine how melodrama has traveled to and been transformed in India, China, Japan, and South America, whether through colonial circuits or later, globalization; how melodrama mixes with other modes such as romance, comedy, and realism; and finally how melodrama has modernized the dramatic functions of gender, class, and race by orchestrating vital aesthetic and emotional experiences for diverse audiences.

The Melodramatic Imagination

Author : Peter Brooks
Publisher : Yale University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780300065534
Total Pages : 260 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (655 download)

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Book Synopsis The Melodramatic Imagination by : Peter Brooks

Download or read book The Melodramatic Imagination written by Peter Brooks and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 1995-01-01 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this lucid and fascinating book, Peter Brooks argues that melodrama is a crucial mode of expression in modern literature. After studying stage melodrama as a dominant popular form in the nineteenth century, he moves on to Balzac and Henry James to show how these "realist" novelists created fiction using the rhetoric and excess of melodrama - in particular its secularized conflicts of good and evil, salvation and damnation. The Melodramatic Imagination has become a classic work for understanding theater, fiction, and film.

Vampires, Race, and Transnational Hollywoods

Author : Dale Hudson
Publisher : Edinburgh University Press
ISBN 13 : 1474423108
Total Pages : 296 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (744 download)

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Book Synopsis Vampires, Race, and Transnational Hollywoods by : Dale Hudson

Download or read book Vampires, Race, and Transnational Hollywoods written by Dale Hudson and published by Edinburgh University Press. This book was released on 2017-05-18 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The figure of the vampire serves as both object and mode of analysis for more than a century of Hollywood filmmaking. Never dying, shifting shape and moving at unnatural speed, as the vampire renews itself by drinking victims' blood, so too does Hollywood renew itself by consuming foreign styles and talent, moving to overseas locations, and proliferating in new guises. In Vampires, Race, and Transnational Hollywoods, Dale Hudson explores the movement of transnational Hollywood's vampires, between low-budget quickies and high-budget franchises, as it appropriates visual styles from German, Mexican and Hong Kong cinemas and off-shores to Canada, Philippines, and South Africa. As the vampire's popularity has swelled, vampire film and television has engaged with changing discourses around race and identity not always addressed in realist modes. Here, teen vampires comfort misunderstood youth, chador-wearing skateboarder vampires promote transnational feminism, African American and Mexican American vampires recover their repressed histories. Looking at contemporary hits like True Blood, Twilight, Underworld and The Strain, classics such as Universal's Dracula and Dracula, and miscegenation melodramas like The Cheat and The Sheik, the book reconfigures Hollywood historiography and tradition as fundamentally transnational, offering fresh interpretations of vampire media as trans-genre sites for political contestation.

Classical Hollywood Narrative

Author : Jane Gaines
Publisher : Duke University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780822312994
Total Pages : 366 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (129 download)

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Book Synopsis Classical Hollywood Narrative by : Jane Gaines

Download or read book Classical Hollywood Narrative written by Jane Gaines and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 1992 with total page 366 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An overview of film studies

All that Hollywood Allows

Author : Jackie Byars
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1134910800
Total Pages : 348 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (349 download)

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Book Synopsis All that Hollywood Allows by : Jackie Byars

Download or read book All that Hollywood Allows written by Jackie Byars and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2003-09-02 with total page 348 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: All that Hollywood Allows explores the representation of gender in popular Hollywood melodramas of the 1950s. Both a work of feminist film criticism and theory and an analysis of popular culture, this provocative book examines from a cultural studies perspective top-grossing film melodramas, such as A Streetcar Named Desire, From Here to Eternity, East of Eden, Imitation of Life and Picnic. Stereotypically viewed as a complacent and idyllic time, the 1950s were actually a time of dislocation and great social change. Jackie Byars argues that mass media texts of the period, especially films, provide evidence of society's consuming preoccupation with the domestic sphere - the nuclear family and its values - and she shows how Hollywood melodramas interpreted and extended societal debates concerning family structure, sexual divisions of labour, and gender roles. Her readings of these films assess a variety of critical methodologies and approaches to textual analysis, some central to feminist film studies and some previously bypassed by scholars in the field.

Gaslight Melodrama

Author : Guy Barefoot
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN 13 : 1474290361
Total Pages : 242 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (742 download)

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Book Synopsis Gaslight Melodrama by : Guy Barefoot

Download or read book Gaslight Melodrama written by Guy Barefoot and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2016-10-06 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1945, a year when American crime films were apparently moving out on to the streets of contemporary Los Angeles and New York, one reviewer noted the emergence of a 'cycle of mystery and horror pictures placed in the gaslight era of the turn of the century.' For another critic, it seemed that for Hollywood there was 'no world of today save the world of London by gaslight'. In Gaslight Melodrama, Guy Barefoot examines the films that gave rise to such comments, and the pattern of discourse that gave rise to such films. The book's main focus is provided by 1940s Hollywood melodramas such as Gaslight, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Hangover Square. It also discusses a related cycle of British films that located murder and melodrama in Victorian or Edwardian settings, and then looks beyond cinema to the Gothic novels of the 18th century, 19th century discussions of gas lighting in street, home and theatre, and ambivalent 20th century responses to the Victorian era. Combining close analysis of particular film texts with attention to cinema's cultural context, Gaslight Melodrama provides an exploration of the ways in which the past has been the site of contested meaning, and an examination of the network of melodramatic narratives embedded within familiar and lesser-known examples of classical Hollywood cinema.

A Companion to the Biopic

Author : Deborah Cartmell
Publisher : John Wiley & Sons
ISBN 13 : 1119554810
Total Pages : 466 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (195 download)

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Book Synopsis A Companion to the Biopic by : Deborah Cartmell

Download or read book A Companion to the Biopic written by Deborah Cartmell and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2020-01-15 with total page 466 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The most comprehensive reference text of theoretical and historical discourse on the biopic film The biopic, often viewed as the most reviled of all film genres, traces its origins to the early silent era over a century ago. Receiving little critical attention, biopics are regularly dismissed as superficial, formulaic, and disrespectful of history. Film critics, literary scholars and historians tend to believe that biopics should be artistic, yet accurate, true-to-life representations of their subjects. Moviegoing audiences, however, do not seem to hold similar views; biopics continue to be popular, commercially viable films. Even the genre’s most ardent detractors will admit that these films are often very watchable, particularly due to the performance of the lead actor. It is increasingly common for stars of biographical films to garner critical praise and awards, driving a growing interest in scholarship in the genre. A Companion to the Biopic is the first global and authoritative reference on the subject. Offering theoretical, historical, thematic, and performance-based approaches, this unique volume brings together the work of top scholars to discuss the coverage of the lives of authors, politicians, royalty, criminals, and pop stars through the biopic film. Chapters explore evolving attitudes and divergent perspectives on the genre with topics such as the connections between biopics and literary melodramas, the influence financial concerns have on aesthetic, social, or moral principles, the merger of historical narratives with Hollywood biographies, stereotypes and criticisms of the biopic genre, and more. This volume: Provides a systematic, in-depth analysis of the biopic and considers how the choice of historical subject reflects contemporary issues Places emphasis on films that portray race and gender issues Explores the uneven boundaries of the genre by addressing what is and is not a biopic as well as the ways in which films simultaneously embrace and defy historical authenticity Examines the distinction between reality and ‘the real’ in biographical films Offers a chronological survey of biopics from the beginning of the 20th century A Companion to the Biopic is a valuable resource for researchers, scholars, and students of history, film studies, and English literature, as well as those in disciplines that examine interpretations of historical figures

Vision's Immanence

Author : Peter Lurie
Publisher : JHU Press
ISBN 13 : 0801879299
Total Pages : 254 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (18 download)

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Book Synopsis Vision's Immanence by : Peter Lurie

Download or read book Vision's Immanence written by Peter Lurie and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2004-08 with total page 254 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Lurie takes particular interest in the influence of cinema on Faulkner's fiction and the visual strategies he both deployed and critiqued. These include the suggestion of cinematic viewing on the part of readers and of characters in each of the novels; the collective and individual acts of voyeurism in Sanctuary and Light in August; the exposing in Absalom! Absalom! and Light in August of stereotypical and cinematic patterns of thought about history and race; and the evocation of popular forms like melodrama and the movie screen in If I forget thee, Jerusalem. Offering innovative readings of these canonical works, this study sheds new light on Faulkner's uniquely American modernism."--BOOK JACKET.

Hollywood Spectatorship

Author : Melvyn Stokes
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN 13 : 1838716246
Total Pages : 178 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (387 download)

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Book Synopsis Hollywood Spectatorship by : Melvyn Stokes

Download or read book Hollywood Spectatorship written by Melvyn Stokes and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2019-07-25 with total page 178 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is an examination of the concepts of spectatorship in the light of historical accounts of audience reception. The book looks at how audiences have historically talked about Hollywood movies, and the ways in which 'word-of-mouth' responses have affected the reception of individual movies.

The Melodramatic Public

Author : R. Vasudevan
Publisher : Springer
ISBN 13 : 0230118127
Total Pages : 471 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (31 download)

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Book Synopsis The Melodramatic Public by : R. Vasudevan

Download or read book The Melodramatic Public written by R. Vasudevan and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-04-30 with total page 471 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What does it mean to say Indian movies are melodramatic? How do film audiences engage with socio-political issues? What role has cinema played in the emergence of new economic forms, consumer cultures and digital technologies in a globalizing India? Ravi Vasudevan addresses these questions in a wide-ranging analysis of Indian cinema.

World Cinema's 'Dialogues' With Hollywood

Author : P. Cooke
Publisher : Springer
ISBN 13 : 0230223184
Total Pages : 279 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (32 download)

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Book Synopsis World Cinema's 'Dialogues' With Hollywood by : P. Cooke

Download or read book World Cinema's 'Dialogues' With Hollywood written by P. Cooke and published by Springer. This book was released on 2007-07-30 with total page 279 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Paul Cooke looks at Hollywood's interaction with national and transnational cinemas, from German Expressionism to Bollywood and Chinese film. While Hollywood has had a huge impact on the medium - doing all the talking in the 'dialogue' - world cinema's economic, aesthetic and political relationship with Hollywood is of profound importance.

Refiguring American Film Genres

Author : Nick Browne
Publisher : Univ of California Press
ISBN 13 : 9780520207318
Total Pages : 348 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (73 download)

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Book Synopsis Refiguring American Film Genres by : Nick Browne

Download or read book Refiguring American Film Genres written by Nick Browne and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 1998-04-22 with total page 348 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection of essays by leading American film scholars charts a whole new territory in genre film criticism. Rather than assuming that genres are self-evident categories, the contributors offer innovative ways to think about types of films, and patterns within films, in a historical context. Challenging familiar attitudes, the essays offer new conceptual frameworks and a fresh look at how popular culture functions in American society. The range of essays is exceptional, from David J. Russell's insights into the horror genre to Carol J. Clover's provocative take on "trial films" to Leo Braudy's argument for the subject of nature as a genre. Also included are essays on melodrama, race, film noir, and the industrial context of genre production. The contributors confront the poststructuralist critique of genre head-on; together they are certain to shape future debates concerning the viability and vitality of genre in studying American cinema.

Specters of War

Author : Elisabeth Bronfen
Publisher : Rutgers University Press
ISBN 13 : 0813553997
Total Pages : 303 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (135 download)

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Book Synopsis Specters of War by : Elisabeth Bronfen

Download or read book Specters of War written by Elisabeth Bronfen and published by Rutgers University Press. This book was released on 2012-10-03 with total page 303 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Specters of War looks at the way war has been brought to the screen in various genres and at different historical moments throughout the twentieth century and into the twenty-first. Elisabeth Bronfen asserts that Hollywood has emerged as a place where national narratives are created and circulated so that audiences can engage with fantasies, ideologies, and anxieties that take hold at a given time, only to change with the political climate. Such cultural reflection is particularly poignant when it deals with America’s traumatic history of war. The nation has no direct access to war as a horrific experience of carnage and human destruction; we understand our relation to it through images and narratives that transmit and interpret it for us. Bronfen does not discuss actual conflicts but the films by which we have come to know and remember them, including All Quiet on the Western Front, The Best Years of Our Lives, Miracle at St. Anna, The Deer Hunter, and Flags of Our Fathers. Battles and campaigns, the home front and women-who-wait narratives, war correspondents, and court martials are also explored as instruments of cultural memory. Bronfen argues that we are haunted by past wars and by cinematic re-conceptualizations of them, and reveals a national iconography of redemptive violence from which we seem unable to escape.

Gender and Genre in 1990s Hollywood

Author : Patricia Di Risio
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN 13 : 1350292850
Total Pages : 273 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (52 download)

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Book Synopsis Gender and Genre in 1990s Hollywood by : Patricia Di Risio

Download or read book Gender and Genre in 1990s Hollywood written by Patricia Di Risio and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2024-11-14 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The 1990s was a decade of significant turmoil in Hollywood cinema, which resulted in a watershed moment in the interplay of gender and genre. Patricia Di Risio argues that cinematic representations of unconventional women had an important effect on traditionally male oriented genres, such as the crime thriller, road movie, western, film noir, war film, sci-fi, and horror. Di Risio analyses seven key films from the decade, including Blue Steel (1990), Thelma & Louise (1991), The Quick and the Dead (1995), Bound (1996), Jackie Brown (1997), G.I. Jane (1997) and Alien: Resurrection (1997), paying particular attention to their use of irony, allusion, and pastiche. She highlights how their female protagonists, a majority of whom are decidedly queer or gender questioning personas, produce an intense crossover in genre conventions, largely driven by their gender rebellion. She examines how a deconstruction of gender simultaneously allows genre hybridity and intertextuality, taking these films into unexpected new directions. In doing so, she delineates a clear line between the unconventional nature of the representation of the female protagonists and innovative changes to genre filmmaking practices.